The debate continues about regional norms for English usage around the world, although the discussion has become more realistic and less didactic. Educated non-native varieties are increasingly accepted, distinctions are being made between national and international language uses, and localized varieties are no longer considered as necessarily…

The rise of American English as the medium for exhange of scientific and technical information worldwide is a linguistic phenomenon. For some time, applied linguists in Britain have provided texts to meet the demand for English for special purposes and English for science and technology. Their works use a British form of language and cover British…

Papers from the 1998 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium include: "Patterns of Gender Agreement in the Speech of Second Language Learners"; "'Nomas' in Mexican American Dialect"; "Parsing Spanish 'solo'"; "On Levels of Processing and Levels of Comprehension"; "The Role of Attention in Second/Foreign Language Classroom Research: Methodological Issues";…

Discusses the assumption that linguistic heterogeneity reflects social heterogeneity. The article examines a challenge to this assumption evident in the Gaelic-speaking communities of East Sutherland, Scotland, with homogeneous populations showing well-established patterns of language variation that do not correlate with socioeconomic status. (38…

This collection of papers on linguistic experiments includes: "Initial Tones and Prominence in Seoul Korean" (Ken de Jong); "The Domains of Laryngeal Feature Lenition Effects in Chonnam Korean" (Sun-Ah Jun); "The Timing of Lip Rounding and Tongue Backing for /u/" Gina M. Lee); "Prosody and Intrasyllabic Timing in…

Research reports included in this volume of working papers in linguistics are: "Perception of Consonant Clusters and Variable Gap Time" (Mike Cahill); "Near-Merger in Russian Palatalization" (Erin Diehm, Keith Johnson); "Breadth of Focus, Modality, and Prominence Perception in Neapolitan Italian" (Mariapaola…

Discussions in speech and language pathology often contain references to language differences and the ways these differences compare with speech and language disorders. There is ongoing research on the regional varieties of English, and within the past decade, information on social and ethnic variation in language has been accumulating. Based on…

Errors can be considered concrete representations of stages through which one must go in order to acquire one's native language and a second language. It has been discovered that certain errors appear systematically, revealing an approximate system, or "interlanguage," behind the erroneous utterances. Present research in second language…

An exploration of issues in language diversity addressing the nature of dialect, features of the dialect, features of black English Vernacular (BEV), linguistic phenomena in the black urban community, theories of the origins of BEV, and its social, economic, and political ramifications suggest that BEV, like other dialects, meets the needs of its…

A study examined differences in argumentative strategies in Japanese and American English by analyzing English essays on capital punishment written by 22 American high school seniors and 30 Japanese college sophomores. Differences were found in the organizational patterns, content and use of rational appeals, preference for type of diction, and…

A study comparing the request strategies of native and non-native speakers of English and Spanish is reported. Subjects were 29 American and 78 European students with varied first languages, enrolled in English and Spanish courses at the University of the Basque Country (Spain). Data were obtained using a general background questionnaire and a…

The purpose of the study reported here was: (1) to determine whether any predictable relationships exist between the spoken language patterns of individuals and those individuals' ethnic attitudes; and (2) to identify the degree of association present among various selected demographic factors, language patterns, and ethnic attitudes. The…

What has been labelled mainstream dialectology has been criticized soundly on theoretical grounds, yet mainstream dialectologists have responded with the assertion that their critics have not been intimately familiar with dialect methodology and are therefore not qualified to criticize. Claiming that while theoretical issues are far from being…

This description of Appalachian speech, derived from one part of the final report of a research project on Appalachian Dialects, is intended as a reference work for educators, particularly reading specialists, English teachers, language arts specialists, and speech pathologists. Chapters deal with the following main topics: (1) a sociolinguistic…

The conference papers from a colloquium on issues in bilingualism and biculturalism include: "Le bilinguisme et biculturalisme: essai de definition" ("Bilingualism and Biculturalism: Attempt at Definition") (Francois Grosjean); "La variation individuelle dans l'acquisition d'une langue seconde" ("Individual…